Misawa Tanabata Festival - end of July

Well we have now been here just over a month! And so far we are really enjoying ourselves (minus not having our stuff)!

July 26th we went to the Misawa Tanabata Festival. It went on for three days I think. Here's the history of what the festival is celebrating:

Tanabata is a Japanese tradition wherein people write their wishes on tanzaku papers (colorful, small strips of papers) and hang them on bamboo branches. People also decorate bamboo branches with various kinds of paper decorations and place them outside their houses.
It's said that tanabata's origin dates back to more than 2,000 years ago with an old Chinese tale. Once there was a weaver princess named Orihime and a cow herder prince named Hikoboshi living in space. After they got together, they were playing all the time and forgot about their jobs. The king was angry at them and separated them on opposite sides of the Amanogawa River (Milky Way). The king allowed them to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar. Tanabata literally means the night of the seventh, and it's also known as the star festival. It's believed that Orihime and Hikoboshi can't see each other if the day is rainy, so people pray for good weather and also make wishes for themselves. Depending on regions, it's celebrated on July 7 or August 7 (which is around the seventh day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar) in Japan. Many cities and towns hold Tanabata festivals and set colorful displays along the main streets.

Seems like Tanabata Festivals are held in almost every city/town. They are held on various days in July and August (possibly moved away from the traditional dates so that they wouldn't have overlap??). Our weather was drizzly/rainy so many of the displays had been covered with plastic. They were prepared!

View down the street as we walked off the base.

Chicken on a stick.

First festival, food and random adventuring

Before I get to the festival, a couple things, if you've had any trouble viewing all the photos in previous posts you may need to refresh your browser a few times as you scroll down for them to all load. Sorry there are so many pictures, but I feel that's better than me just writing a bunch of jibberish....I will try not to make the posts so long and hard to view from now on :)

Here's a picture of the first bottle of sake we bought!

the bottle says:
"A SAKE which faintly falls down 
the throat with a vaporous sensation 
like the evanescing snows of spring."
How could we not buy something 
with such an awesome description?

The Lake Towada Fireworks Festival was the first festival we went to. This is the beginning of "festival season" there will be multiple ones every week/weekend for the next couple of months. It took some convincing to get Keenan to go, there was a pretty good chance of rain, but it was going to be our chance at fireworks since there weren't any for the 4th of July. There wasn't more than a sprinkle of rain, we got to try traditional festival foods, see fireworks set off in a whole new way and spend time with new friends!

GATES OF HELL?!

Had a great day today (July 13, 2013)!! Explored a new beach, found a very cool place thanks to my excellent navigational skills (Keenan might disagree on that, but I did find it), and visited the Gates of Hell! Our trip was about 110 km (68 miles) each direction, but driving non-stop would take about 4 hours round trip.

Here's our driving route from the day.

First stop out of Misawa was Sand Dollar Beach. This beach is northeast of Misawa on the Pacific Ocean. Easy to see how it got it's name. Hundreds of sand dollars on the beach. Most were broken, but we collected plenty that were intact. There were a few guys there surfing, but I don't think swimming is technically allowed there. Almost all of the beaches here are off limits for swimming due to the dangerous currents. Water is definitely too cold for me to even think about swimming though!

Sushi train, other food and hair salon experience

The week of July 7th...
We found a second vehicle, a 1996 Honda CRV, very low mileage, I can't remember exactly but less than our car which has 40-some thousand kilometers. Got a pretty good deal on it. I've been keeping an eye out for any job openings. Re-submitted my application to be a nurse at the hospital, there aren't any actual open positions though. There's a opening for a Case Manager that I'm applying for, but it does say being bilingual is a requirement. I'm applying just in case they can't find someone bilingual. On Monday night we had dinner at Kappa Sushi. It's the sushi place that has the train/conveyor belt. The house also got invaded by mosquitos and gnats Monday night. We discovered that they were getting in around our screens...hundreds of them...gross! I was up on a chair trying to smash them for over an hour!

The conveyor belt is on the bottom,
from there you can just grab what you want.
If you custom order something it will arrive to the table on the train (top).

That's my dessert arriving on the train!

Dessert was the best part for me.
I think the sushi there is only so-so, but it's cheap, about a $1-2 a plate

Double rainbow we had after an evening rain shower

sunset from our back patio

Hiking Oirase Gorge

First, I forgot to post about our dinner out on July 5 after the Big Buddha. We went to Phada's Padthai and Authentic Thai food. I had Pad Kee Mao with beef, mushroom, bell pepper, basil leaves stir fried with chili-garlic sauce and noodles. Keenan had Stir fried vegetable with beef, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower, bean sprout, mushroom, onion, bell pepper, Chinese cabbage stir fried with oyster and soy sauce. Both dishes were very good, I liked mine better because it had a spicy sauce and noodles.

My meal.

Keenan's meal.

Outside of restaurant.

Ok, now on to our hike in Oirase Gorge! You may recognize the name Oirase Gorge from a previous post, we briefly checked it out when we went for a drive around Lake Towada. This time we went to go for a hike and see it more closely. Some of the pictures may look familiar. From base to the start of the hike is about 53km (33 mi). It takes about 45 minutes-1 hour to get there. The hike itself is about 9km (5.6 mi) each way, we only hiked one way and got picked up at the lake. We went with 2 of Keenan's co-workers. Weather was ok, chance of rain and it sprinkled during the hike and started pouring right when we got to the end at the lake. This place is absolutely beautiful, I can't wait to go back in the fall and see the leaves and in the winter when the waterfalls freeze!

Independence Day and a visit to Aomori Big Buddha!

Happy Independence Day! Ours was pretty low-key. Had tried to plan a BBQ with Keenan's co-workers but the weather forecast called for rain and strong winds. The base also cancelled the fair they had planned. Once again the weathermen were completely wrong. It was a great day, 70's and sunny. We spent most of the day relaxing. Grilled steaks in the afternoon on the grill we bought earlier in the week from someone about to move. While sitting outside reading in the afternoon I noticed my right ankle was getting swollen. There was a bug bite so I didn't think much of it. We went to a movie that evening and when we got back out into the light I saw that the swelling was getting worse, it was hot and red. (2+ pitting edema for my nurse friends). A lady at the theater told me she'd seen people with these bites before and after the swelling the bites ooze for a couple days...oh great, can't wait! I had to request a stop for Benadryl before we went to dinner. I'll put a pic at the end of this post (don't want to scare anyone away by starting off with a pic of my feet!).
We had dinner at Ankur (Indian food), this was our second visit there. Keenan and I shared the butter chicken and nan. Not as good as the chicken curry I'd had last time.
No fireworks going on :(

The next day, July 5th the weather was supposed to be cloudy with a chance of rain. I convinced Keenan that we should go see the Big Buddha by Aomori. We took a longer more scenic route through the mountains going there, we saved money by not taking the toll road, but as far a seeing the scenery, there wasn't much to see due to the fog. The Big Buddha is about 75km away (46 miles) by the route we took.

A little shrine we passed on the way there.

So much for taking in the scenery...

A cemetery that was near Big Buddha.

The Big Buddha was bigger than I expected and there were also several temples/shrines in the park. I also didn't expect to be able to go inside the different buildings. It was drizzling while we were there, but they had complementary umbrellas everywhere for us to use. Which was great because we don't have our umbrellas yet, they're in our Unaccompanied Baggage. I'll use pieces of the English visitors guide they gave us to help explain my pictures (they aren't the greatest quality and some aren't quite straight, but I don't have my scanner).

Settling in...sort of

It's the first week of July and our second week in Japan. I apologize to anyone reading this that thinks my blogging thus far is boring, especially this post as it will cover things like weather, grocery shopping and electrical difficulties, but I have had some questions about those things so I'll discuss them :) More exciting stuff coming soon...promise!